Fire
by Jaensdenim
Summary: Sometimes, Talia thinks that this woman, that elegant and refined Miranda, could have been her, in another life. The bridges burn and she hears Bane's voice echo through the city. It is time. One Shot.


For TDKR Kink meme prompt here = batmankink . livejournal 1568 . html ? thread = 99104 # t99104

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They call her Miranda and she flatters herself to think that it suits her. She had liked to play the mundane Gothamite, organizing fundraisers and wear excessively expensive dresses. Sometimes, Talia thinks that this woman, that elegant and refined Miranda, could have been her, in another life. The bridges burn and she hears Bane's voice echo through the city. It is time.

It takes a few hours for the city to fall into an orgiastic trance. They destroy the house she bought with stolen money and Talia watches them do it, an air of perfect horror painted on her features. Miranda would have cried so she cries, and Lucius Fox puts his large, warm hands on her shoulders, takes her into safety. She half-smiles, plays the part, follows him to the Wayne Tower as the city tears itself apart. That night, she hold his hand as she cries, and he tells her that's it going to be alright.

She knows it isn't, not for him anyway. When his breathing steadies itself, she cautiously moves herself away. Outside, the snow has started to swallow the city. She smiles as she hears her footsteps reverberate in the empty streets of the Lower Town. Everyone has left for the higher streets, to bathe in the champagne of the rich and taste for the first time the delicate flavour of unpunished manslaughter.

She goes down to sewers, she goes to see him. He doesn't wish to see daylight unless it's necessary. Terror needs time to fully bloom. Bane waits.

They know her and they let her pass in silence. Bane's henchmen have that subtle air of light insanity to them, because they believe, like she used to believe and like that Dark Knight still believes. His speeches are the gospels of the Revolution and they drink every single one of his words with furious ecstasy. Talia looks at them with a mix of compassion and disgust, because she can't help but to remember her younger self, listening to the holy words of Father.

He's alone, as usual, lifting one of those incredibly large weights in his left arm, an IV tucked in the other. That's how they feed him, because he can't take off the mask her father stitched on his face out of pity (or resentment, she can never be sure), not now and not ever. He turns to her when she enters, but he doesn't rise from the concrete ground on which he's sitting right. He looks at her with with those wide, empty brown eyes as she approaches, kneels in front of him. He doesn't flinch as she caresses the side of his face, he breathes slowly through the mask. He doesn't talk. He tries to talk as little as possible when he's with her. He thinks she hate the voice, but the truth is sadder that than. The truth is that she doesn't even remember what his real voice sounded like.

She smiles, the best imitation of the Child's smile, back in that hellhole in which she grew up. It never fails to make his eyes shine brightly. It works today once again. It makes her wish she could love him as he loves her.

Bane is a mask the same way Miranda and Talia are masks. When they're together, alone like this, when the world burns around them, they don't need names. He is the Prisoner and she is the Child. It had always been like this, even after the Prisoner's face had been eaten away by rage and anger, even after the Child had grown up to be a merciless killer.

Her fingertips sharply remove the IV from his arm, and his muscles tense. She presses a light kiss on the cold metal of his iron mask as if to apologize.

"You've done well," she whispers to his ear as she puts her arms around his neck, resting her head on his shoulder. "Thank you."

His body is warm against her small form, she's still a little bit cold from the snow. He stinks of sweat and gasoline and she can feel the regular beating of his heart pulsing through his skin. She remembers the long, cold evenings of the desert, the smell of a cold sand floor, the feeling of rough fabric against her skin and the warmth of a wood fire in the middle of the night. They stay like this for a long moment, without talking, sharing warmth, feeling alive together. Then, the first lights of the morning pierce through the clouds. Miranda has to be back next to Lucius Fox, next to the other board members, playing her role, watching as this city burns.

The next days are long and monotonous. Chaos is replaced by the stillness of terror, and the city freezes under the wind of December. She watches Gotham break into pieces, and she thinks of Father. She remembers, when she first came here, looking at the workers dismantling the old monorail that connected the city together, wondering if he screamed in the fire that ate him alive when he tried to take down the new Babylon. She doesn't know, but she hopes he did. He had been just a man, after all, and the League of Shadows she had seen after his death had been but a ghostly, pale copy of what it had been before.

The head of Wayne Enterprises still meet everyday, dressed in suits that hardly keeps them from the cold now that the current is gone and desperately trying to rationalize and quantify utter destruction. She hates them, the board members, they are fat with stolen money and even though the city is falling around them, she can see in their eyes that they are still calculating the gains and losses of their shares. They get uglier day by day, and she wishes she could stop attending, tired of old men shouting and shaking out of fear. Their words accuse her of funding the project and not thinking of the dangers it represented. Their tone accuse her of being a woman and a foreigner, of sleeping with Bruce Wayne and using it as a weapon. She is guilty of all charges.

"There's no point in arguing about interests and on who we should blame this whole situation anymore, gentlemen," she says at one point, and rises from her chair. "I think we should think about saving our lives first."

They stop shouting. Her footsteps reverberate in the silent room as she leaves. The League of Shadows hated criminals based on the irrational, ever-changing laws of men. She despised them all without distinction, the one who stole while staying in the carefully calculated margins of the laws even more than the others.

Terror slips itself into every corner, every house, and the streets are white, empty and beautiful. Men are fools and never learn. From the top of his pedestal, the madman judges and condemns, speaking the true words of the revolution. Jonathan Crane scares her, a lot more than the Batman, a lot more than the ghost of her father. He scares her because there is that spark in the corner of his eyes when he looks at her for the first time, and he might know. Or maybe it is the spark of delirium because he smiles of that devious, devious smile and Talia hopes that if he actually knows, his mouth his shut by blind fear. It is there, fear, fear in the glint of his teeth, the holes in his suit, the hollow of his emaciated cheeks.

The ice eats people and Talia grins on the inside. Miranda listens to Lucius Fox's clever plans, her eyes wide and fascinated. In a lot of ways, he is a better man than Bruce Wayne could ever wish to be, because he wasn't born rich, thought and invented his way up to fortune and used that same fortune so that kids would not have to be forced to take their parent's place in the house like he did. Talia hopes his death to be a painless one. He deserves it. Heroism still doesn't touch her, not one bit, because it is for the fools like Father. Speaking of faceless, incorruptible justice had been easy but he had banned the Prisoner in a whirl of anger, because Talia was just a name he had given her when he had found her, a grown child already, so different from her mother, cold and strong from a life of darkness. She doesn't miss him, never has, because the desert taught her that failures never get graves.

The Child doesn't meet the Prisoner again. She doesn't need to. They're doomed, as they always have been, and the masks they both wear are stitched to their faces. It's some sort of odd, silent rage that fuels Talia Al Ghul, because all she has ever wanted was to be better than the father that left her and her mother to rot in a pit in the middle of the desert. Her soldier has never had any other desire than to serve her, and so Bane goes around the city, making sure very little detail of her plan doesn't go wrong, making sure that they'll both die with everyone else on the island.

She dreams a lot, sleeping on a mattress in a crowded room. She dreams of that small, dusty cell, of the wall, of her hands against the rock, of the jump. Sometimes, she wakes up in tears and hates herself for it. Lucius Fox misguidedly reassures her with his warm voice, telling her that they'll find Bruce, that the night is always the darkest just before the dawn. She lets her head rest against his chest, closes her eyes. The gesture feels too familiar, even though the hunger, the desert and the pit are far behind her.

"Gotham will survive," he tells her, and she manages to will herself not to flinch. "Gotham always survives."

And it's true, as true as her father is dead and as true as she will not get out alive of this city. Gotham is a parasite, a leech that sucks and gorges itself in blood to feed the corrupts and the crazies. It could never die a natural death. That was where Raz Al Ghul had been wrong. Gotham didn't need fear. Gotham needed fire.

The detonator in her pocket waits.


End file.
